Somalia should free jailed reporter, solve press murders

H.E. Hassan Sheikh
Mohamud
President of the
Federal Republic of Somalia
Office of the
President of Somalia
Villa Somalia,
MogadishuVia email

Dear President
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud,

We are writing to
express our concern about a Somali journalist who has been imprisoned since
January 10 for interviewing a woman who claimed she was raped by government
soldiers. We are also concerned by recent statements you made in Washington indicating
your administration will not tolerate negative coverage by the local press. We urge
you to ensure the journalist is released immediately and to follow up on your
commitment to create a task force to investigate Somalia's unsolved journalist murders.

Freelance
journalist Abdiaziz Abdinuur was detained without charge on
January 10 at a police station in Mogadishu, where he has remained with limited
access to a lawyer. No warrant was issued for his arrest. Abdiaziz has
contributed to several news outlets including Dalsan Radio, Badri Media Productions, Radio
Ergo, and the U.K.-based Daily
Telegraph.

Police had
summoned Abdiaziz for questioning in connection with his January 8 interview
with an internally displaced woman who claimed she was raped by Somali soldiers
while living in a camp last year. Al-Jazeera English had published a story on
January 6 about government soldiers raping internally displaced women in
Mogadishu camps. It was unclear if the woman mentioned in the story was the same one Abdiaziz had interviewed.

In a news
conference on January 16, Police Commissioner Sharif Shekuna Maye accused
Abdiaziz of assisting Al-Jazeera with the story and of bribing the alleged rape
victim. He said Abdiaziz had tried to "tarnish the dignity of the police force
and the dignity of the Somali nation." But CPJ research shows that Abdiaziz had
no connection to the Al-Jazeera report and had, in fact, interviewed the woman
two days after the story was published. In addition, Abdiaziz never published
his own interview with the alleged rape victim.

In a January 17 speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington,
you declared your government was committed to good governance, accountability,
and transparency. Yet, when asked a question about the ongoing detention of
Abdiaziz, you said: "We want [journalists] to be free and have the opportunity
to tell the people what they are supposed to tell ... but that does not mean that
tainting negatively the image of the public, the image of the government is not
something acceptable to any standard in the world...And this is propaganda. We do
not detain unnecessarily, the police is handling, and it is a civil case."

In your speech,
Mr. President, you also stated that credible judicial reform was the second priority of your
government's agenda. But this cannot take place in a country where journalists
are summarily thrown in jail for critical reporting. Moreover, there is no legal basis for
holding a journalist simply for conducting an interview. This arrest sends a
chilling message to the Somali media to self-censor any critical coverage of
security forces or of sensitive but important issues such as the rights of
internally displaced Somali citizens.

The day after
your speech in Washington, the minister of interior accused Abdiaziz of
fabricating the rape story, according to the state-run press. We believe that
such a statement by a high-level official in your government violates the
journalist's presumption of innocence and puts political pressure on the
judicial process.

Mr. President, in
your January 17 speech, you also identified the need to overcome the "culture
of impunity" in Somalia. CPJ research shows that not a single journalist murder
has been prosecuted in Somalia over the past decade. CPJ ranked Somalia second
worst on its 2012 Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where
journalists are murdered regularly and the killers go free.

CPJ documented 12
journalist murders in Somalia in 2012, making the country the most dangerous in
Africa for journalists. The day after your speech, on January 18, unidentified assailants
in Mogadishu gunned down veteran journalist Abdihared Osman, the fifth journalist from the Shabelle
Media Network killed in 13 months.

You can advance
your goal of good governance, transparency, and accountability by creating the
task force to investigate and resolve murders of journalists, as you pledged to
do last year. If you want to "rebuild Somalia with strong institutions that can
deliver services to people," as you said, we urge you to begin here.

In the past two
weeks, you have had several meetings with leaders and diplomats from across the
globe, including U.S. President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton. During a press conference in
Washington on January 17, Secretary Clinton said that the United States sees
new opportunity and optimism in Somalia with the establishment of your
government. But we at CPJ are concerned that recent actions taken by your
government and the ever-growing number of unsolved murders in Somalia tarnish
this sense of optimism.

We urge you to
ensure Abdiaziz Abdinuur is released from custody immediately and that all
journalists in Somalia are allowed to report freely and critically. We also
call you on to follow up on your commitment to create a task force that would
bring to justice the perpetrators of the journalist murders in the country.